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Author: knutson4

What You Can Do Post-Vaccine, and When

Posted on
New York Times

Noted: Kelsey Vandersteen, a trauma I.C.U. nurse at UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wis., will receive her first injection on Wednesday — probably months ahead of her young daughters and husband, who works from home for a software company.

Even after her second shot, she doesn’t intend to change her behavior, including wearing a mask. She says she hopes this will model good behavior for others. Besides, she said: “I prefer the mask. It protects me from other stuff as well. We’ve been completely healthy — not a sniffle since March.”

 

How the much-litigated ballot deadlines affected the US election

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The Guardian

Quoted: Voting by mail may seem more convenient, but it also requires the voter to act much earlier than they would if they went to the polls, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. You have to make sure to request your ballot early, and in some states, make sure you have a valid ID to do so.

“One problem with having a hard and fast election day deadline is that it actually forces people who want to vote by mail to submit their ballot before the campaign is over, and so it deprives them of the right to watch the campaign to its conclusion,” said Burden.

Worried about the COVID-19 vaccine? Doctors and experts clear up some common concerns.

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Appleton Post Crescent

Quoted: Still, there was a high bar to clear for Pfizer and Moderna to get their vaccines in front of the committee. Dr. James Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute, said he was “reassured and a little taken aback” at the rigorous safety and effectiveness data the FDA required to issue an emergency approval for a COVID-19 vaccine, even at a time when President Donald Trump and others in Washington were pushing to speed the process up.

You Can Get Through This Dark Pandemic Winter, Using Tips From Disaster Psychology

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Scientific American

Quoted: One key benefit of therapy is the close relationship between the patient and the provider, which fosters a strong sense of belonging. “You’re meeting with somebody with whom you have a real relationship—this is a person who cares about you, seeks to understand you, is warm and accepting,” says Bruce Wampold, a professor emeritus of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “And for many people, this is particularly healing.”

US health officials: No need to ban flights from UK even as it battles new coronavirus variant

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USA Today

Noted: Dr. Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said travel bans need to be carefully considered because they can cause fear and disruption. Such restrictions can buy time, he said, but may not always be effective. He noted, for example, that Trump’s oft-cited ban on travel from China occurred after the virus was already circulating in the U.S.

About 10,000 people have received COVID-19 vaccine in Wisconsin so far as influx of Moderna doses expected

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Also Monday, Andrew Petersen, president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the system is having conversations with the federal government about how it can help distribute the vaccine.

The success campuses have had in partnering with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide rapid-result testing to Wisconsinites was an example of how UW’s reach could help with the vaccination effort, he said.

What happens when the subject of race is on the table? We invited a diverse group of people to our house to find out.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: At our home, the topic was the role millennials can play in improving racial conditions in the city.

We invited fourth-year medical students from the University of Wisconsin Training in Urban Medicine and Public Health program (TRIUMPH). They provide health care for medically underserved communities.

Wisconsin Vintners Association home winemakers club celebrates 50 years, making it one of America’s oldest

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Those funds are used to improve Wisconsin’s wines through education and research, Franzoi said. Recipients of Vintners donations have included the University of Wisconsin-Madison to hire an enology instructor and a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee project to map the state’s wineries and gather soil samples to learn more about the terroir of Wisconsin vineyards.

A new poll shows the ‘outsized’ financial burdens faced by millennials

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Yahoo! Money

Noted: The new Harris Poll was commissioned by DailyPay, the Bipartisan Policy Center Funding Our Future campaign, and The Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin. The survey was conducted online from Nov. 17-19 and surveyed 2,075 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, among whom 593 are millennials between the ages 24-39.

“This data shows the resilience of younger generations in the face of the second major economic shock of their financial lives,” added J. Michael Collins of the Center for Financial Security, referring to this year’s pandemic and the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Nevermind the political messenger: When it comes to COVID-19 guidance, trust the message, experts say

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USA Today

Quoted: “Research would confirm again and again, when people feel that what’s asked from them is not actually followed by those in power, there’s a sense of betrayal that will occur,” said Dominique Brossard, professor and chair of the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are being shipped across the country

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The Pfizer vaccine will be kept at storage facilities across the state as it is distributed. University of Wisconsin Health will serve as a storage facility for south-central Wisconsin’s supply of the Pfizer vaccine. Marshfield Clinic Health System said it will be an initial distribution site for the rest of north-central Wisconsin.

What reactions can I expect? And other COVID-19 vaccine questions answered by Wisconsin health experts

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Much-anticipated COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed across Wisconsin starting in mid-December. Though widespread availability of the vaccine is still months away, we know you may have questions.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has assembled a panel of experts from the University of Wisconsin to help answer questions from readers.

Black residents built Halyard Park. Now they fear being taxed out their homes as downtown development moves northward.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Revel Sims, a gentrification expert and urban planning professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the question he hears the most often is this: Can development occur without displacement?

“I don’t have a silver bullet answer,” he said. “For a long time, the strategy has been you can’t stop it, you just have to get benefits (through) community benefit agreements.”

Trips from dorms to bars played critical role in UW-Madison’s COVID-19 outbreak, study finds in analysis of cellphone data

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Bars played a critical role in University of Wisconsin-Madison’s coronavirus outbreak this fall, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

Shortly after trips to a cluster of bars near Witte and Sellery residence halls spiked in early September, the two dorms saw large outbreaks of COVID-19, MIT economics professor and physician Jeffrey Harris found in a recent study.

Local performer’s pro-staying-at-home video goes viral, thanks to Rafael, Ava & Oprah

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Madison 365

James Gavins, the creative director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has taken to making music, dance and comedy videos during the COVID pandemic. Performing is nothing new for Gavins — an alum of the UW’s First Wave performing arts scholarship with a degree in theater, he worked with the Youth Arts Initiative and mounted a one-man show before returning to UW to join OMAI.

“The comedy and the sketches, and things like that, I’ve been doing that for a while, but as far as the music … that really started once quarantine hit, because I was an artist at home figuring this all out for myself, this is how I communicate. You try to communicate, and this is how I relate to most people,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Canadian illustrator Julie Flett’s books reveal the truth about modern Indigenous life

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NBC News

Noted: Groups like We Need Diverse Books and accounts like The Conscious Kid have pushed for diversity and inclusion on children’s bookshelves and promoted stories written by and featuring Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. Only 46 out of 4,035 books for children and teens reviewed in 2019 were by Indigenous authors, according to data compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin Corn Growers Expected To Bring In Record Yields

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Joe Lauer, an agronomy professor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said farmers were grateful for more normal weather patterns this year after an extremely wet season in 2019.

“There’s a little more peace of mind, if you will, in kind of going through what I just call an average normal production season,” Lauer said. “We’re going to end up with record yields but it’s just kind of easier psychologically to take.”

Shawn Conley, soybean and wheat specialist for UW-Madison’s Division of Extension, said a lack of precipitation throughout the state at the end of summer caused the USDA to lower their forecasted yields to 53 bushels per acre. That’s six bushels, or almost 13 percent, higher than last year.

But Conley said most farmers were happy to have the dry weather.

“That allowed farmers to have a lot of days in the field that they can push through and get their crops out of the field in a timely manner,” Conley said.

Young Voters Helped Biden Beat Trump After Holding Back in Primaries

Posted on
The Wall Street Journal

Noted: Allyson Fergot, a spokeswoman for College Democrats of UW-Madison, said the group held weekly virtual phone-banking events over Zoom in the month before the election to encourage students to vote and answer questions about voter registration

In Dane County, Wis., home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received nearly 35,000 more votes than the Democratic ticket got four years ago. And in Centre County, Pa., home of Pennsylvania State University, the running mates received 1,800 additional votes over the 2016 count.

Retailers adjust and public health experts urge caution looking ahead to Black Friday in the pandemic

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Wisconsin Examiner

Quoted: “It will be unlike any other Thanksgiving week shopping that we’ve had, I imagine,” says retailing expert Jerry O’Brien.

Perhaps this year’s biggest Black Friday change is that retailers effectively started Black Friday weeks ago.

“They’re pretty much all coming out openly saying, ‘We’re going to spread Black Friday out through November,’” says O’Brien, who is executive director of the Kohl’s Center for Retailing Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison epidemiologist Dr. Ajay Sethi is hoping that foot traffic will be modest and safe.

“I anticipate there’ll be less Black Friday shopping this year compared to last year, because a sizable proportion of people are well aware of our pandemic,” says Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences and faculty director of the UW-Madison master of public health degree program. “It obviously needs to be minimal, because we want to have really no crowding anywhere, for at least the next several weeks or months, so we can stop the spread of COVID in the state.”

‘To beat this virus, we have to be united’: Chaos and resistance to COVID-19 measures hinder Wisconsin’s response

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Patrick Remington, former epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program, said the best approach to tackling the massive outbreak is working together.

“To beat this virus, we have to be united in response,” he said.

Did Viruses Create the Nucleus? The Answer May Be Near.

Posted on
Quanta Magazine

Quoted: Just this year, researchers spotted pores in the double-membrane-bound viral factories of coronaviruses, which are eerily reminiscent of the pores found in cell nuclei. “If this result holds up, and assuming that the pore-forming protein was not derived from a eukaryotic genome, then it does blunt one argument against the virus model,” wrote David A. Baum, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in an email.

Leaf-cutter ants have rocky crystal armor, never before seen in insects

Posted on
National Geographic

Quoted: The discovery is especially surprising because the ants are well known. “There are thousands of papers on leaf-cutter ants,” says study co-author Cameron Currie, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We were really excited to find [this in] one of the most well-studied insects in nature,” he says.

 

8 Wisconsin cities have some of the fastest case growth in US, per a New York Times analysis. Seven of them have UW campuses.

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Appleton Post Crescent

Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times’ list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest.

La Crosse is number one on the New York Times’ list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively.

With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus.

Donald Trump tears into Joe Biden in return visit to Wisconsin

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The president praised the Big Ten for its decision this week to start college football this season after earlier postponing it and singled out Barry Alvarez, the athletic director at the University of Wisconsin. Madison officials have urged fans not to gather for Badgers games as cases in the city climb — an increase largely driven by college students.

Covid spike or touchdown spike? Big Ten returns to the football field

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Wisconsin Examiner

Shortly after it was announced that the Big Ten conference had backtracked and the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be playing football this year, the team’s Twitter account tweeted a meme video of a group of people celebrating in a crowded bar during a soccer game in 2016. 

“You love to see it,” the tweet said.

Except in 2020, amid a local spike of COVID-19 cases, that image takes on a whole new meaning. 

Black Maternal and Child Health Alliance launched to improve the birth outcomes of Black mothers and babies in Dane County

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Noted: The group will be co-chaired by inaugural members Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Alia Stevenson, Chief Programs Officer with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.

“The Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance is comprised of Black women serving in important roles in health care, our community, and as decision-makers and knowledge experts. Our highest priority is to ensure that the health and wellbeing of Black mothers remains front and center,” says Co-Chairs Green and Stevenson in a statement. “As the Alliance moves forward, we are pleased to join the Dane County Health Council as we work together to advance the health of Black mothers, babies and their families in this county.”

Dane County add 210 new coronavirus cases; second consecutive day over 200

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Dane County confirmed 210 new coronavirus cases this morning, as yesterday’s Data Snapshot from Public Health Madison Dane County (PHMDC) reported 72 percent of all new cases the September 1-14 were from UW students and staff. Today’s new cases bring the total for the county to 8,461 as of this morning. There are 6,548 recovered cases while 1,872 are currently active. This brings the percentage of active cases to 22 percent.

Dane Co. average COVID-19 cases per day nearly doubles since last week

Posted on
NBC-15

Noted: Just over three-quarters of those recent cases were found in University of Wisconsin-Madison students and staff, with students making up the vast majority, 1,808 to 10 for the UW staff, PHMDC data notes indicate. Nearly 1,400 of the total cases were linked to college-age housing clusters, such as forms, apartment complexes with 10 or more cases, and fraternities and sororities.

As the pandemic grinds on, the Northwoods beckons many seeking solitude, natural social distancing

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Bayfield County is projected to lose 28% of its child population by 2040. Pepin County, 25%; Price County, 20%, according to the Applied Population Laboratory at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Those communities that lose too much of their youth population are in danger of becoming unsustainable,” the university said.

Coronavirus in Wisconsin: State reports more than 1,400 new cases as seven-day case average continues to rise

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The new cases come as colleges and universities across the state continue to grapple with outbreaks of the virus on and around their campuses.

Nearly 90% of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who have tested positive for COVID-19 have exhibited symptoms, public health officials said Wednesday.

‘Wisconsin Funnies’ highlights comics artists from the Badger State, including Denis Kitchen and Lynda Barry

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Formats and preoccupations change, but comics never lose their power to communicate, criticize and entertain.

“Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics,” presented through Nov. 22 by the Museum of Wisconsin Art in two locations, surveys our state’s role in the great hurly-burly of funny words and pictures, especially from underground and alternative points of view.

One week into the school year, COVID-19 spread pauses in-person classes at UW-Madison

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Freshmen Lauren Tamborini and Bailey Donahue move out of Sellery Residence Hall at UW-Madison on Thursday. The students will be attending class online for at least the next two weeks. Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.

Here’s how the University of Wisconsin-Madison is limiting in-person interactions on campus in the next two weeks

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In response to spiking COVID-19 cases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to make classes virtual, restrict other in-person activities and quarantine students living in two residence halls, Sellery and Witte. The decision was made Wednesday  and most restrictions will be in place until at least Sept. 25.

More than 350,000 accounts tweeted after Kenosha violence. Experts say bots were likely among them.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: In the last presidential cycle, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russian-linked disinformation campaigns focused ads on the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in particular, targeting both sides of the political spectrum with inflammatory posts on race, gun rights and increasingly, feminism.